1934 Russian film with music by Prokofiev, English subtitles added. [subtitles updated 6/20/08]


This movie is part of the collection: Feature Films

Audio/Visual: sound, b&w with color subtitles
Language: Russian, English subtitles
Keywords: Kije; Kijé; Киже; Prokofiev; Russian; Russia; Tynyanov; Poruchik; Поручик; Прокофьев; Tsar

Creative Commons license: Public Domain

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Reviewer: Clementj - - September 3, 2010
Subject: Film with separate subtitles
Would it be possible to get the film with separate subtitles, or in a subtitles track? I can improve the video quality quite a bit by doing stabilization and denoising, but the subtitles make stabilization very difficult. The audio has already been fixed by manually adjusting the volume to undo the extreme compression. The extreme compression raises the noise level and was standard procedure for showing old films on TV. You can hear that the film is quiet immediately after someone says something, but then the noise rises for several seconds until it reaches the compressed level. When the band plays you can hear it is loud at the beginning, but then lowers to the compressed level. I may not be able to do a Criterion edition, but I can make it much more watchable.

Reviewer: Vitali Chaconne - - August 8, 2008
Subject: current files should work fine! (& sound not missing!)
There was a problem, but the files currently on the site seem to work fine now, and have updated subtitles.

The film is also viewable at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5960899000870748608.

[Note in reply to Clementi: There is a Russian DVD release, which I obtained after a long Internet search for a company that would send it overseas. I have looked, but never seen in on sale in a store in Moscow or St. Petersburg. (You can see info about the DVD at http://www.ozon.ru/context/detail/id/3353380/ but Ozon won't send DVDs overseas.) Anyway, I don't hear the specific problems you report with the audio here. There is an huge amount of crackle and the sound is primitive -- but it's a 1934 Soviet movie after all. As for the DVD, it is not restored in any way -- no Criterion Collection release, this! The DVD producers clearly cut the treble, so you do hear less crackle, and perhaps their copy had less audio noise to begin with. But otherwise it sounds pretty much like what I posted. The DVD seems to have come from a more battered print as well, which is evident in the video. Needless to say, no subtitles.]

Comments: kizhesubtitles AT mit DOT edu

Reviewer: sciwriter - - January 26, 2008
Subject: Divx codec
Before downloading the movie, I downloaded a free Divx codec from the web. It works in Windows MediaPlayer.

Reviewer: Inogdaskripach - - January 25, 2008
Subject: codec
Looking at the file, it looks like DivX 6.0 is what it is using. I am not a total novice, but I'm not an expert either, so let me know if there is other information that is relevant.

However, I was having so much trouble with the uploading here, that I also put the thing on Google Video -- with slightly updated subtitles, in fact. Search there for Kizhe, if you want. You can't download from there, but you can see the film (in slightly lower quality than here).

Reviewer: twainbough - - January 24, 2008
Subject: Same problem.
I downloaded both the mov and flv files. The MOV file only displays the title, but has sound. I downloaded the FLV, but it's the picture only and no sound. Very strange.